Enredo

Childhood friends Mariana and Jose Diogo reunite years later. She's now a successful chef helping abuse survivors, while he becomes her bodyguard. Their deep bond persists amid family drama and threats.

This story is an intimate portrait of two souls bound together since childhood, Mariana and Jose Diogo, yet separated by time. Raised with love by her grandmother and mother after her father's death, Mariana finds an unlikely friend in the orphan Jose Diogo, a silent bond that Benedita, the wise grandmother, seeks to strengthen by adopting him. However, a cruel mistake severs this tie and sends the boy back to the orphanage, leaving wounds that time cannot heal. More than a decade later, Mariana returns to the Douro as a renowned chef, owner of a restaurant that employs women who, like her mother, were victims of abuse. But the peace she seeks hides even greater challenges: a manipulative stepfather, a deluded mother, a health scare involving her grandmother... and the reunion with her soulmate, Jose Diogo. The love that binds them never faded, and from the moment they meet again, they embark on a dance between past and present, where every glance is a promise yet to be fulfilled. Mariana shines, but her light attracts dangerous shadows, those who have no regard for morality or the simplicity of life. As if fate were weaving its invisible threads, Jose Diogo becomes her bodyguard, willing to face any danger to protect her, even when his girlfriend, Monica, tries to tear them apart. Among vineyards, blooming flowers, and the lingering flame of childhood within us all, A Protegida promises to be a tender and real diary of memories, following the lives of characters who could cross our paths every day.